Tiny Little Bits
by Xanrivash
Summary: When everything has fallen apart, how do you even begin to put it back together? One tiny little bit at a time.
1. Chapter 1

"What was I supposed to have done differently?"

"You could have canceled the Goddamn mission before any of this shit hit the fan!"

"I didn't know there was any reason to until it already had!"

"Oh, right, because nothing ever suggested to you that there might be something wrong with the world? Nothing like _Demyx_?"

"I told you, I thought he was making shit up!"

"Right, because every time Demyx feels lazy and doesn't wanna do a mission, he makes shit up to try and get it canceled. And he always sticks to the story even when you call him a liar and punch him for it just because he's that Goddamn lazy."

"Would you stop?"

"Stop what? You had reason to believe there might be something seriously wrong with the world. You should have scratched the mission, or at least been a hell of a lot more careful. Not started punching your subordinates."

"Look - look - there _was_ something wrong with the world - it was making us all a bunch of pissy jerks, which -"

"Which should have clued you in there was something wrong, you jackass!"

"I didn't figure it out until it was too late!"

"Well, aren't you just a _genius_. Kingdom Hearts help us all if any of us are ever replaced by pod people, if you don't even know how _you_ normally act."

"I didn't think it was anything serious! We were just all getting on each other's nerves for some reason! That's all I thought it was!"

"Okay, you, you're always a pissy jerk. That I'll excuse. And you may not have the brains to catch on to the fact that Demyx and Roxas are only ever pissy jerks if there's a reason for it. _Don't. Shut your mouth._ The boss wants to talk to you. _Now_."

Demyx huddled on his bed, trying to will himself to hear anything but the conversation in the hallway outside. That was the problem with senses; as nice as it was to be able to see and hear and taste and everything, sometimes they exposed you to things that you would rather...just _not_. And while Demyx had found out that he could basically use those weird little things on his ears to turn his hearing on and off (something he gathered was impossible for most people), he could never bring himself to do so, because not having that frightened him so deeply, reminded him too much of that empty, silent void...he couldn't bear to give up a single sense, even if it meant having to listen to Xigbar bawling Axel out for something that wasn't even Axel's fault. At least the blame for this one had finally been decided, albeit wrongly.

And because Demyx could barely get out more than a few simple, broken words at a time, he couldn't explain to anyone that this was all his fault, and that if he'd just gone home along with Axel and Roxas in the first place and hadn't woken up the dragon, none of this would have happened. He'd still know everything he was supposed to know, his body would still remember how to do everything it was supposed to do, his memories would still make sense instead of being a disjointed collection of sensory experiences he couldn't quite process yet...and the dragon would continue ruling unchallenged, and all those people would still be trudging their way through their grey, empty lives in that grey, empty world, and the Queen's son would have drowned in a rain barrel and no one would have cared.

And he would never have had to experience the agony of the void...or the glory that came after...

And now, the dragon was dead, the world was free, Axel was taking the blame for something that wasn't his fault, and Demyx...even he had to admit he was a mess. He could barely talk, walking on his own was all but impossible, and activities he knew on some level that he used to adore were simply miles beyond him now. He could only stay in the kitchen for so long before he inevitably started to cry, and he didn't dare look under the bed - he had some idea what was down there, but he knew that seeing any of it would be too painful to bear. Not all senses were good, he'd discovered, and he'd already figured out that he really hated pain.

Rolling carefully off the bed, he stumbled his way over to the rows of icons and statues in one corner of the room, clinging to furniture to help keep himself upright. These were his gods, he knew, that he continued to worship even when he suspected they were either gunning for him or had simply forgotten him completely - but he no longer could. The mantras kept slipping from his mind, and the few bits and pieces he remembered he could only recite silently to himself; to speak them aloud right now would be to butcher them horribly. He had books of hymns and sacred prayers, but the lines and shapes inside meant no more to him than a child's abstract doodles. Trying to remember which god preferred what offerings made his head actively hurt. And, dammit, he could really use some divine help...

Well, Lord Ganesha was a very humble god. A prouder and more lordly god wouldn't ride on a mouse, after all. Maybe a humble and accessible god just might be willing to hear someone like him, who couldn't remember what prayers to recite or what offerings to give or even how to read so he could look the information up. All he had was faith and desperation, more desperation than faith...no human would fuss about paperwork when someone was crawling on the ground begging for help, so hopefully Lord Ganesha wouldn't either. At least, that was what Demyx was hoping as he lowered himself to the floor, his eyes fixed on two neighboring images - depictions of Lord Ganesha as Shakti Ganapati, remover of fear, and Maha Ganapati, granter of prayers and prosperity. He figured he'd need the help of both aspects, and more besides. As he lay there, his eyes fixed on the images of the god, a fragment of prayer sprang into his mind - _Om, Sri Ganeshaya nama_...

_Ganapati, Lord of Ganas, You see before You the lowest and humblest of Your devotees - one who tasted godhood for an instant, and now is barely fit to call a man. An athlete who cannot walk, a cook who cannot feed himself, a musician who cannot play, a man with no more mind than a baby..._ Demyx almost cried, forced to consider what a train-wreck of a human being he was, but self-pity was not the whole point of this prayer. _O Lord, who destroys the obstacles of His devotees, grant me Your protection and guidance, and destroy the obstacles of ignorance and forgetfulness that prevent me from rediscovering the man I once was...Om, Ganesha sharanam...grant me Your grace, sharanam Ganesha..._

"Demyx? Are you okay? Did you fall down again?"

"I'm...fine," Demyx grunted with difficulty - it figured, the one time he actually _wanted_ to be flat on the floor was the one time someone showed up promptly to help him up. "I w-ah-I-I was...p-praying."

"...On the floor?"

"On...the...f-f-llloor."

"Is this something your gods insist on, or..."

"R-R-Rok-k-sasss...a-a-arrre you g-g-onna hhhhelp me up-p?"

"...Oh. Right." A moment later, someone grabbed Demyx's arm and pulled him up into a kneeling position. "...You're still bigger than I am...let me adjust my grip."

"No. No." Even more than usual, Demyx bitterly regretted being unable to speak coherently right then. "L-let me...do it m-mys-s-s-selllfff." Without further ado, he grabbed the corner of the stereo cabinet, next to the shelves of icons and statues, and tried to pull himself up. It took a surprising amount of effort, half of it just to remember the motions involved, but eventually, he did manage to lever himself onto his feet, and stood there shakily for a moment before stumbling back to his bed.

It wasn't right. Being able to stand up with less help than usual should not be a milestone. And yet, it was.

Roxas sat down on the bed next to him, as if it didn't occur to him that Demyx would rather be left alone with his own shame for a while. He didn't say anything, for which Demyx was grateful, until he said the one thing that Demyx did not want to hear: "What are we going to do about sitar lessons?"

Demyx stared at him for a moment, wondering whether that was calculated sadism or simple extreme tactlessness. "C-c-cancellll...thhem," he said, struggling to pretend that he wasn't crying, and didn't even feel tempted to cry. "I-ah-I c-can't t-t-tea-ch rah-r-ri-ight nnow. I c-c-c-can't even play."

"Then I'll teach you."

Demyx had to spend a moment blinking at Roxas in complete lack of comprehension before he could even try to find words. "W-wha-what? B-bu-but you c-can't...Ah-I mmmean, I-uh-I kn-n-now w-we d-didn-t suh-susp-spend tha-thaaaat muchh t-time -"

"I know," Roxas said before he could finish that mangled sentence. "But you're forgetting one very important thing. You're _Demyx_. You've taught me the basics; I don't think I'll need to do more than teach you the basics and you'll be good to go."

There wasn't much Demyx could say to that; then again, there wasn't much Demyx could say, period. He certainly couldn't explain to Roxas that he felt like all his memories came from some other Demyx, one who actually was as awesome as his friends seemed to think he was (or at least used to be). "Ah-it j-jusss...d-doesn't s-s-seeeeeeem l-like a guh-good idea..."

"How so not?" Roxas demanded; Demyx couldn't answer him, only look away in shame. "Demyx...come on. As long as I've known you, music hasn't just been important to you. It's been part of you. Sometimes seems like the biggest part. And...I dunno what that monster did to you, but...it can't have killed that part of you. If it had...you really would be dead..."

Now Demyx just wanted to hug Roxas, and say something make him stop frowning and looking upset, but what was he going to tell him? That there was nothing to worry about? There certainly was. That he'd be okay sooner or later? Demyx was less sure of that than Roxas already was. That he didn't dare even try to summon his sitar, because after singing a whole new universe into existence, finding out he could no longer play perfectly normal instruments that he'd only been playing for fifteen years already would be a soul-crushing comedown? Like that would make Roxas feel better, even if Demyx could tell him as much.

_He was the universe, the universe was the music, the music was him...forever and ever, a song that would resonate through eternity, because he was eternity and he would have it no other way..._

No. He couldn't not have the music. But he was so afraid to try and reclaim it...

Slowly, with a shaking hand, he reached into the air, focusing on the memory of a brightly-painted instrument, lighter than it looked, with a long neck and movable frets and very many strings, one of which did more work than the rest put together and most of which weren't played at all...an instrument that had always felt so right in his hands, it was as if it was a part of him...it was a part of him...and all of a sudden, there it was, in his hands, and something was right with the worlds again. He couldn't do much more than sit there and hug it for a while, even if Roxas was the one who'd wanted it in the first place.

How was it played? There were those little wire things on a chain around his neck; he had the impression that they had something to do with it...and he had marks on the tips of two fingers, dark callused grooves that looked like the wire bits would fit them perfectly. Getting the chain, and therefore the attached wire things, off from around his neck was tricky; he fumbled with that tiny little catch until he was ready to cry and Roxas finally had to undo it for him. Fortunately, getting the wire things off the chain was so easy even Demyx could do it, and getting them on his fingers was as simple as lining them up with those grooves...and then what?

"Sit like I'm doing, with your legs crossed," Roxas prompted. "The sitar should be balanced between your left foot and right knee, so your hands don't carry the weight..." Demyx listened and obeyed, though he was painfully, shamefully aware that he'd been the one who first explained all these things to Roxas, a lifetime ago, or so it seemed. The student was now the teacher, not because the student had advanced so far, but because the teacher had fallen so far. It was funny, though; the balancing act involved in walking was still almost impossibly tricky, but keeping the sitar balanced was thoughtlessly easy. And the more tiny little bits fell into place, the more tiny little bits followed them. "Okay. You think you got it balanced?"

Demyx wasn't even listening. He carefully plucked the lone steel string with one of those wire things - _plectrums, picks_, he now remembered, more specifically _mezrabs_ - and listened to the sound that it made, a soulful twang. Pressing the fingers of his other hand down on the strings made it sound different - the pitch changed. When he plucked the string in a slightly different way, the sound changed in a different way. And when he started combining different methods of changing the sound, he got all kinds of different sounds.

And when he started putting all those different sounds together, trying to create an echo of the music he'd found deep inside himself...and when he actually succeeded...when the music inside himself started to come spilling out through his fingers and pour itself out into the world...

He wasn't even Demyx anymore. He was only a conduit for this glorious music inside him. What he remembered and what he was consciously capable of meant nothing; his hands knew how to ply the strings like a master's, and his ears knew how each note fit into place, and pulled the music back inside himself to refresh the well eternally. The music was sweeter than any scent or flavor he knew, any scent or flavor in the worlds; it satisfied the greatest hunger he had. All input from his eyes went completely ignored; nothing he could see mattered half so much as the feel of the strings and the sound of the music. Even as the world around him began to dim and darken suddenly, he paid no attention...the music was all that mattered...

* * *

><p>Well, if this was anyone other than Demyx, Roxas would be immensely worried by this sudden collapse. But this was Demyx, and since he'd just been playing sitar like the fate of the multiverse depended on it, and he wasn't seizing or anything, all Roxas could think to do was check to make sure he was breathing all right and wasn't feverish, and then just shake his head for a moment. All right, that would do for proof positive that the old Demyx wasn't irretrievably gone. But Roxas was sure there must have been better ways to prove that than playing himself into such a frenzy that he suddenly passed out in the middle of it.<p>

Though that was, after all, such a very Demyx thing to do. Even when you really wished he wouldn't.

With a faint sigh, Roxas carefully pried the sitar out of Demyx's hands, set it aside, lay him down in a more comfortable position, and pulled the sheets over him; as long as he'd passed out on the bed anyway, he might as well get a proper nap out of it. As an afterthought, he took his own boots off, picked up the sitar again, and retrieved from his pocket one of the mezrabs Demyx had given him so long ago at the beginning of their sitar lessons, back when he could walk and talk and smile properly - but he still played just the same. Even if he lived and practiced for another hundred years, Roxas would never be able to play half so well as Demyx on a bad day, but the least he could do was play something for him now.

* * *

><p>AN: Welcome to a series of vignettes on the long process of repairing Demyx, again. This is apt to craaaaaaaaaaawl.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

Demyx wanted to sleep, he really did. Kind of. He knew damn well that he needed rest; his eyes were burning with fatigue, his muscles refused to do anything but relax, and his mind was reeling so badly he could hardly put two thoughts together. And his bed just felt so soft, and so comfortable, and so exactly where he wanted to be right then...

It was just that...sleeping was so scary. Bad things always seemed to happen when he slept.

Sometimes, he found himself sitting on the roof of a house, as the water he loved so much rose up against him and threatened to sweep him away forever, house and all. Sometimes, he found himself standing on a wooden platform, surrounded by a crowd that screamed silently for his blood. Sometimes, he was sprawled on the floor of a big room that should have felt safe, with a person he should have felt safe with, except Axel had booze on his breath and bloodshed on his mind. Sometimes, he was chained to a table while a pretty woman who practically glowed with evil cut his body apart, as Roxas looked on and smiled. Sometimes, he was trapped on a roller coaster with a girl who couldn't be killed and whose only goal was to kill him; sometimes, he was trapped in an endless cave, searching desperately for a way out before his wounded body gave out or his pursuers caught up with him. Sometimes he was a prematurely-embittered child on the street struggling to sustain a life he wouldn't mind ending, sometimes he was a mighty dragon so drunk on his own power he'd use his best friends for bargaining chips, sometimes he was a ghost trying to convince himself it was time to go when he wanted nothing more than to stay.

Sometimes he was a god. Sometimes he was nothing at all.

It wasn't fair. When he was awake, he could remember good things and good times, and being happy, back when he could make sense of the worlds around him and know what being happy was all about, but he could never remember them clearly enough to find that _happy_ again, let alone relive them. When he was asleep, he relived the bad times. He'd found fear all over again. Fear, and terror, and hurt, and defeat, and despair, and helpless anger, and betrayal, and loss, and forms of pain he wished he'd never remembered existed. It wasn't fair - why did he have to be handed back all the bad things right away, while all the good things were kept away from him?

That was why he didn't dare sleep. All the bad things it made him remember kept piling up on him while he was awake; he didn't need any more bad things joining them. Not until he got some of the good things back.

But if he stayed in bed, he was bound to fall asleep. And if he fell asleep...more nightmares.

And if he didn't fall asleep, he'd only get even more tired, and his eyes would melt and his muscles would stop working and his brain would wander off and never come back. And his head was starting to hurt, which would go away for a while if he slept. This was a very annoying dilemma.

Maybe if he got out of bed...

That seemed ideal. It was harder to fall asleep when you weren't someplace warm and comfortable, and seeing as it was late, he could practice walking when there wasn't anyone around to make fun of him. Rolling carefully out of bed, he stumbled his way to the door and out into the hall, leaning on the walls for support. Axel would have a fit if he saw him wandering around right now, unaided and unsupervised, but he couldn't get in the practice he needed to really _walk_ again if he had someone helping him every step of the way. He needed to do some things all by himself.

It was just that his head still hurt.

The walls were cool, though. Resting his forehead against one for a while made him feel a little bit better. Sadly, the delicious coolness didn't last, and he couldn't spend the whole time putting his head against different parts of the wall. Where could he find more cool things that were safe to put on his head longer-term? He remembered a large metal box with a pair of doors, in a big room that made him think of food...but where was the room, let alone the box? When he tried to remember the route, all he could come up with were a disjointed series of images, corridors and corners and intersections that were all just as white, white, white as the hallway he was in right then, and he couldn't put them into any sort of order, let alone construct a coherent route out of them. He didn't even know which way to turn here. For several moments, he stood at the intersection uncertainly, wondering which way to go or if he should just turn around and go back before he got lost, then, suddenly angry at himself for his own stupidity and indecisiveness, he picked a direction at random and went that way. Unfortunately, it seemed to be the wrong way; the doors he soon found himself in front of reminded him of the room he'd just left, but they didn't seem to have anything to do with the route to the room with the cold box...and he was starting to feel very strange...like he wasn't really within his own body, and like something very bad was about to happen...

All of a sudden, he was somewhere soft again, and thought for a moment that he was back in bed somehow - but the sheets were coarser than his own, and the blankets didn't weigh right, and the room smelled subtly different. And where only his head had been aching before, now his _everything_ ached. Where was he, anyway...? He rolled over and sat up slightly, and found himself in bed in a different bedroom than his own, and Lexaeus was sitting in a chair next to the bed watching him. With the state his brain was in, and how eloquent he was under normal circumstances, asking what had happened and what he was doing there was a hopeless cause; thankfully, Lexaeus volunteered the information before he hurt himself too badly trying to ask. "Rest and relax, for now," Lexaeus said, as if Demyx randomly appearing in his room was an everyday thing. "I won't ask you to explain what brought you to my door, and only explain that you had a seizure while there."

"A-a w-w-w-...k-k-kyaaaa?" Demyx mumbled, trying to make something - anything - make some sense. Unfortunately, when it did make sense, it was not very positive or encouraging sense. "Ah...m-m-mujhe m-ma-af k-kaa-ar-do," he stammered, not fully aware that he probably wasn't making any sense to Lexaeus. He wasn't fully aware that English and Hindi were separate languages. "S-s-s-shuk-k-kriiiiy-yaaa..." He tried to sit up a little further, to discover his head no longer ached dully but was now pounding fiercely. He whimpered and lay back, feeling for the center of the pain and discovering a substantial knot, as if he'd hit his head on something. As much as he would have liked to, the words that would have enabled him to ask for a bag of ice, in any language, were simply eluding him; all he could do was press his hand to the knot and try to wish the pain away.

Lexaeus, as usual, seemed to take everything he said and did in stride. "I'm going to assume that whatever you just said was at least polite," he said with a faint smile. "Would you like a bag of ice for that bump?" Demyx could only nod in response, and Lexaeus disappeared, presumably in search of that ice. Demyx didn't even know where to get it; for a moment, he thought about following him in order to find out where it was, but even if he had a chance of keeping up, his head wouldn't let him even try to get out of bed right now. All he could really do was lie there and try not to go asleep. Unfortunately, he failed miserably at that.

He found himself outside in the snow, next to a small cottage, and somehow he and Roxas were busily pelting each other with snowballs, at least until he ran out of snowballs and simply tackled Roxas into the nearest snowbank. They were both cold, and wet, and Demyx's fingers were starting to go numb, and his head still hurt, and Roxas was busily shoving handfuls of snow in his face in an effort to make Demyx stop stuffing snow down his collar, but Demyx didn't care about any of that. None of it mattered to him, even the fact that he was dreaming. He was having a blast, and that was what mattered most.

* * *

><p>AN: It seems chapters of this story will not hold to a set length or format.<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

It was a perfectly ordinary world, and an ordinary-seeming city, nestled in a valley with mountains on three sides, farmland on the fourth, and a river running down the middle. The sky was blue, the farms were healthy, the river was clear, the setting was lovely (especially the storybook conical mountain immediately behind the city), and the lack of a city wall could only mean one thing at this technology level, which Luxord might have described as "Roman if Rome never fell" - the people weren't living in fear. That all by itself was probably the best sign that this was going to be a good mission, though Demyx knew all too well that the most unassuming worlds could prove to be the most disastrously hazardous. Then again, Angrejar and the Nameless World had both been dark, overcast, and lacking a certain something. This world was bright, blue-skied, and had that certain something. If it really was true that a world's or kingdom's usual weather predicted the nature of its inhabitants, this was as fine a world as you could ask.

And yet there was something..._off_ about it.

Demyx tried to keep his impressions to himself, this time. Not only was the setting beautiful, the people were in the habit of producing some fine public artwork and clearly loved a good time, though all the local music he'd heard so far had been rather bawdy songs. Temples were well-tended and well-attended, friends were friendly, families were loving, and Axel and Roxas were acting completely normally, and more likely to laugh at him if he suggested there was something wrong than to punch him. And with even less definite proof that there was really anything wrong (he couldn't even say that things were _too_ perfect), Demyx did his best to convince himself that he was imagining things, and everything was just fine. For some reason, though, his brain just wouldn't accept that conclusion. Everything was normal, everything was as expected, everything was all right...something was wrong.

But for the love and blessings of all the gods individually, _what_?

Desperate to see everything for himself, by himself, Demyx did his best to lose Axel and Roxas once they got inside the city. While Axel was distracted by some pretty face, and Roxas tried to keep his focus on the mission at hand (whatever that was; Demyx didn't have the paperwork), he slipped behind a building, around a few random corners, and found himself in a dingier, more abandoned-seeming part of the city, that seemed the most obvious place for any bad things to be lurking, but the sense of something being wrong neither intensified nor weakened. And as he rounded the next corner - "There you are; I thought you'd gotten lost," Axel said as he and Roxas popped up out of nowhere, seemingly oblivious to the fact that ditching them had been his entire goal. "Now come on; we have a mission to do."

"A mission to do? Was that hooker you were just chatting up a second ago a mission?" Demyx asked sourly, but Axel didn't seem to hear him. Sighing faintly, Demyx resolved himself to following them around until further notice, namely until he saw a chance to ditch them again. Choosing his moment carefully, he waited until they were both caught up talking to someone, then ducked behind a building, around a few random corners - and despite the fact that he'd started from a different part of the city, and gone in a different direction, he found himself in the dingier, more abandoned part of the city again. And there Axel and Roxas were, as if they'd followed him the entire way.

...Okay, there was _definitely_ something weird going on here.

Demyx waited quite a while before making his next attempt. They forged even deeper into the city, through the main marketplace - as lively and loud as any marketplace in the worlds - into ever wealthier quarters, and finally to the foot of a great temple dedicated to some god Demyx had never heard of before, and while Axel and Roxas were busily debating some obscure point of the local religion (something neither of them should have had a fraction of a clue about), Demyx slipped off yet again, heading in the same direction they'd already been going instead of off to one side. A few careful turns later, that were intended to bring him closer to the mountain behind the city...and he was back in the dingy, abandoned part, and Axel and Roxas were just rounding the corner to meet him, saying "Oh, there you are, we thought you'd gotten lost".

"...Okay, there's definitely something weird going on here," Demyx finally said, growing sick of the charade. "I haven't been getting lost, I've been trying to lose you two and go exploring on my own. But every time I do, I just make a few quick turns and I wind up here, wherever the hell here is. And then you two show up as if you've been tailing me all along when you shouldn't even know where I went."

Axel and Roxas just blinked at him with a special kind of clueless innocence that meant they had no idea what the hell he was talking about. "I haven't noticed anything weird," Roxas said finally. "You just keep wandering off, and we keep having to find you."

"Blessed Gods, Roxas, at no point in time did I ever _want_ to be found; weren't -"

The earth rippled suddenly. Demyx froze up, remembering all too well what had happened the last time the earth began dancing underneath him - it had given way to a terrifying plunge into darkness - but Axel, thankfully, kept his head. "Run!" he shouted, grabbing Demyx and Roxas and shoving them in the direction of the city entrance; Demyx and Roxas, for lack of anything better to do, obediently ran. And ran, and ran, and ran, as if their lives depended on it, though it seemed to Demyx as though they were running in slow motion - running through the ever-growing crowds, all trying to fight their way out of the city, dodging and twisting and carefully maneuvering their way through the packed masses and struggling to keep their footing on the shaking ground, Demyx clinging tightly to Roxas's arm all the way because he did _not _want to lose him now...

And all of a sudden, they were out of the city, and out of the crowd, as the flood of people burst out the main city gate and spread out across the surrounding lands. The ground was perfectly steady beneath their feet - for some reason, the earthquake wasn't affecting anything outside the city boundaries - but as Demyx breathed a sigh of relief and helped Roxas steady himself, he glanced back and saw that the beautiful conical mountain was now missing its top, and what was left of it was spewing fire and dark ash. "No wonder - it was a volcano," he breathed, followed shortly by "Wait a second, where the hell is Axel? Rox, have you -"

"No," Roxas said, his eyes suddenly wide as he looked around wildly - red hair was all but unseen in this world, so Axel should have stood out like a sore thumb, but there were no redheads to be seen. "I thought he was right behind us - I mean, he told _us_ to run, so why wouldn't he..."

"I dunno. Maybe trying to be a hero. Look - you stay right here - no sense risking all our lives again. I'm going to see if I can find him, and if I do, I swear, I'm going to bring him right back." Demyx promptly turned tail and ran back into the city that people were still streaming out of; no one tried to stop him when they saw the look on his face. A few random turns, and he wound up in the dingy, abandoned part again - except the scene was suddenly totally different. The ground had stopped shaking, but now the buildings were tumbling ruins, half-standing skeletons and piles of rubble, all dusted with a thin layer of volcanic ash. Thankfully, Roxas was _not_ there, and Axel _was_, standing next to a partly-collapsed building with one arm resting idly on a broken pole that seemed to have been shoved through the wall somehow. "Thank the Gods," Demyx babbled as he ran up to him. "Why didn't you come with us in the first place? We thought you might have - oh, Gods. Oh, blessed Gods. Axel..."

Axel raised his head slightly to look at Demyx, his eyes dull and his pale face stained with blood that trickled from his mouth and nose. The pole he was leaning on hadn't just been shoved through the wall, it had gone clear through him, impaling him through both sides of his chest and pinning his right arm to the wall. His left hand was draped loosely over the pole, as if he'd tried to pull it out but simply didn't have the strength. "I told you to run," he said in a faint voice. "Where's Roxas?"

"He made it out safely," Demyx said, hardly caring what words came out of his mouth - he had to get that thing out of Axel, he had to get him out of here, he had to save him. "I just came back to get you when we noticed you weren't with us. Just give me a second..."

He put his hands on the pole, intending to pull it out as quickly as possible and ready to stop the ensuing bleeding, but Axel feebly batted his hands away. "Don't...don't bother," he murmured. "It's...stuck good. There's no way..." He coughed, a little more blood leaking from his mouth and nose. "I...I should have run. Shouldn't have...tried to be a hero. And now...look at me."

"You'll be all right, Ax. I'm gonna go back to the castle - get Vexen, Fori, Zexion - I'll get help - we'll get you out of here -"

"No, Dem. 'S too late." Axel shook his head weakly, every hint of life and liveliness gone from his face, voice, and - most frighteningly - his eyes. "Just...get outta here. Run. Never come back. Don' let it get you too..."

_Don't let what get me?_ Demyx wanted to ask, but he had more important things to worry about. "Ax, I can't just leave you here!"

Axel looked up at him, really _looked_ at him, and Demyx suddenly read death on his face far too clearly. No matter what he did or what steps he took or what help he brought, there was no saving Axel now. "Dem...if you wanna help me...kill me. Please. I don' wanna die like this. Like a bug on a pin. Please. It hurts...don' make me die slow..."

Demyx could feel the blood draining away from his face in an instant. "Axel...no...I c-can't..."

"Dems...please. I'm beggin'. It hurts...make it stop..." The despair and agony in Axel's eyes was too much for Demyx to withstand. It hurt - it hurt as if he was the one who'd had that pole shoved through his chest - but Axel was dying, there was no saving him now, and he was suffering so much... Almost as if someone else was controlling his body, he silently reached into his pocket and pulled out his utility knife. A faint flicker of relief showed in Axel's eyes. "Thank you," he whispered. "Just...take care of Rox...please..."

"I will," Demyx whispered back as he unfolded the largest, sharpest blade on the knife. "Forgive me..."

"No, Dem...you forgive you." Those were to be Axel's last words; forcing himself to keep his eyes open so he wouldn't botch the job and make Axel suffer even more, Demyx sank the blade into Axel's neck and dragged it across, targeting the carotid artery. Blood gushed from the wound immediately; by the time Demyx pulled the blade away, Axel was already dead.

The knife fell to the ground as Demyx backed away, all too aware that his cloak was now drenched in Axel's blood. "I'm sorry, Axel," he whispered as flakes of dark smoke began peeling away from Axel's fading body. "At least...you're not hurting anymore...I'm sorry...I'm so sorry..."

Wrapped up in his own grief, he didn't notice that all the wisps and smoke were coiling in one particular direction. He didn't notice a thing until the ground suddenly shook again, and an unnaturally deep, bellowing laugh rang out, and it seemed like four whole blocks were suddenly filled with a...a..._monstrosity_. It bore some resemblance to a snapping turtle, if snapping turtles were three stories high and dull orange and had fire oozing from their cavernous, glowing eyes, mouths, and nostrils, not to mention every single crack in their coal-black shells. "_Why, thank you_," it boomed, as all the wisps and shreds that had once been Axel gathered together in front of it, and became Axel again, completely uninjured, but with the same look of despair and agony in his eyes. "_You've saved me a certain wait. Now I have my ideal slave, ready to serve, a bit ahead of schedule,_" it added, while Axel kept looking at Demyx as if begging him to kill him again and make it stick this time. "_A human puppet will be most useful indeed. After all, I can hardly sit on these petty thrones myself._"

"No," Demyx whispered, realizing he'd just condemned Axel to a fate worse than death. Then he repeated it, louder: "No." His brain felt like a thousand hurricanes, a million thunderstorms, all boiling together into one, seeking only to wipe this monster away, extinguish its fires, split open its shell and _kill it_, kill it so it would never be more than a legend, a story told and retold across so many generations that the truth would fade away and be lost, and the monster would be no more than a mistold tale... "No, you will not sit upon the thrones of mankind, nor will you have a puppet do so in your stead," he continued - or was it him, or had something else taken him over? "You will die here, and the people will rebuild their city right to the top of your mountain, and they will use your bones as pillars and your shell for paving stones, and your mountain will be no more than another cold stone, and in time they will forget even the stories their grandparents told of you - because I am Lung Qin Xiang, and I will make it so."

With that, his body began to stretch, and stretch, and stretch...his skin itched briefly as diamond-hard scales sprouted to cover it, as his fingernails twisted into claws, as his head sprouted horns and his face pushed out into the jaws and fangs of a Chinese dragon, and he roared aloud, aware of his new strength and power - beyond anything five, fifty, five hundred humans could muster, be they never so strong and never so powerful - and fully ready to bring his full might to bear on the monstrous turtle...a turtle is always helpless on its back, and he was fully capable of flipping that monster over, tearing into its soft belly, exposing the fire inside and extinguishing it forever...the turtle-monster bellowed again, as Lung Qin Xiang lifted into the air, but Xiang knew it was a useless gesture - he'd already all but won -

And Demyx jerked awake suddenly, clutching his chest and dimly surprised to feel nothing pounding under his hand. It took him a moment to remember what he was, let alone who and where. For a moment, he thought the dragon - all of a sudden, he - and the earthquake - and Axel - and then the monster - oh, blessed Gods, it had all been a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a really realistic dream...which was good, because he didn't think he'd have the nerve to kill Axel, at all, in any situation, even if he was dying in agony and begging for a quick death. Demyx was simply not that brave. And if he had to watch Axel die, no matter how or at whose hands...well, he'd run awfully short of reasons to wake up in the morning. He'd run short of ability to get out of bed, that was for certain. If only he could explain just how much it meant to live next door to someone who wasn't going to mistreat him or make fun of him, didn't point out how useless he was and what an absolute baby he'd turned into, let him have all the time he needed and all the help he could spare...

That...had been a dream, right? Just a crazy weird dream, of the sort that everyone had sometimes...except Demyx also had a lot of dreams that weren't just crazy weird, that were all-too-real memories, and some of them were almost every bit as bad as that had been...he hoped that one wasn't real, he prayed it wasn't real, but...the state his memories were in, he couldn't be sure if Axel was still alive or if he'd died years ago, or if he'd never existed at all. Maybe he was some figment of his imagination, a strong, loyal, kind friend he'd invented to keep him company during that friendless, lonely childhood he thought he remembered. Of course, he might have invented that too.

He just couldn't tolerate not knowing right now. And there was only one way to find out. Boy, would this not be easy.

Carefully, very carefully, Demyx rolled out of bed and onto the floor. Crawling on his belly - standing up and walking was just too difficult right then - he made his way out of his room, through the bathroom, and into the bedroom beyond. There was a lot of stuff on the floor, meaning the room was definitely occupied. And there was someone sleeping on the bed - a very tall, very thin man with blazing red hair.

All right, that was his Axel. That was all he really needed to know right then. Secure in the knowledge that his best friend was a real person, and still alive, Demyx was content to curl up on the floor, doing his best to avoid all the debris, and go back to sleep.

* * *

><p>"<em>It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now...<em>"

What Axel needed most right then was a chance to roll over and go back to sleep, but he knew it wouldn't be given to him. With a sigh, he reached over and silenced the sacred hymn to drunk dialing, then rolled over in preparation to actually get out of bed and get moving for the day. And then he suddenly discovered a major obstacle, namely Demyx sleeping on the floor, with Sol and Connie curled up against his stomach as if enjoying his body heat. Why on God's green Earth was Demyx sleeping on the floor? Especially Axel's floor? How had he managed to get in without waking Axel up in the process? What were the odds that Axel could actually get an answer out of Demyx if he woke him up right now?

Probably not good, he decided as he reached down to give Demyx a good wake-up shake. Whatever his reasons were, as long as he wasn't doing anything _really_ stupid or dangerous, Axel could live with him keeping them to himself, as opposed to tripping over his own tongue relentlessly. "Wakey wakey," he said, to reinforce the wake-up call. "Boy, did you pick an odd place to crash last night."

Demyx's eyes worked their way open, and as Sol woke up and used his shoulder as a springboard to jump onto Axel's bed, he tried to stand up himself, with very limited success. Eventually, after completely ignoring all Axel's attempts to help, he levered himself up on the edge of the desk and managed to stumble as far as the bed, where he promptly sat down. "Sss-s-s-ssooorrryyyy," he stammered, looking embarrassed.

"I'll forgive you if you explain what you were doing sleeping on the floor," Axel said, retreating just into the bathroom, out of Demyx's sight, to undress and get ready to shower. After all, he had to work today, likely as not.

"I-I-I...h-had a b-b-bad d-dreeaaam."

...Well, that was more of an answer than Axel had really expected. It wasn't even that bad of an answer, except for the part about sleeping on Axel's floor. "All right, I can see the bad dream, but why sneak in and sleep on my floor instead of your own bed? Your bed would have been a lot more comfortable."

"S-s-some...s-some-thin-g b-b-bad h-ah-ah-hap-pened to y-yoouu. I-inn the d-d-drreaam. I w-want-ted to m-make surre youuu wah-wer-re o-k-k-kay."

"...Oh. Well, in that case, I'm kinda touched," Axel said after a moment's thought. "But still, you could have slept in your own bed. You didn't need to crash on my floor for the night - it was probably safe to assume that I was still gonna be here in the morning."

"N-no, Ax. I c-c-couldn-t." Axel was taken aback by the intense look in Demyx's eyes, a look he couldn't interpret, and that invoked as much fear in him as pity. "My head - I-I-I c-can't. I-it'ss jus-s-st...n-nothing f-fif-fits. I d-don't re-rememm-ber...what I r-remember...I-I da-dun-dunno wh-what-t's rrreal and...w-what I just...m-m-made up-p-p. It wa-wasn't s-safe to as-s-sume y-you e-ev-ver ex-issst-ed. I ha-had t-to _know_."

"Demyx..." Axel didn't really know what to say to that. On the one hand, he was touched by Demyx's concern for him; on the other hand...not being able to take it on faith anymore that he was real...not being able to trust that he stayed real overnight, and from one day to the next...what the hell was going on in that head of his? What had been done to him? "I'm so sorry," he said finally, emerging from the bathroom in his bathrobe to give Demyx a tight hug. "You are really...not in good shape, are you."

Demyx didn't answer right away, instead silently leaning his head on Axel's shoulder as Connie woke up, realized her human was gone, and jumped up on the bed to join them. "You're...warm," he said after a moment, absentmindedly stroking Connie's fur with one hand. "Th-that-that's...just lik-ke the A-Axel I rem-mmem-ber." He looked up at Axel, and offered him a tiny smile; it wasn't much, but it somehow made Axel feel better.

* * *

><p>AN: ...I was actually writing this while I was writing the previous chapter. But I decided it would make more sense if the other chapter was published first.<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

It was an hour after breakfast, though Demyx was still nibbling listlessly at an old, cold pancake. Most of the rest of the Organization was gone, either on missions - which was where Axel and Roxas were - or simply unavailable, whether they were busy or simply didn't have time for him. Assuming they were real and had ever existed. Demyx hadn't seen very much of anyone except Axel and Roxas, and Vexen, for physical therapy. Demyx rarely even left his room anymore, especially without an escort, since that incident that had left him sleeping in Lexaeus's bed for a night; the furthest he'd dared go alone since then was Axel's room. He never did manage to find the room with the cold box, where all the food was, and he didn't know if he'd ever work up the nerve to look for it again. Maybe once he remastered the trick of walking properly.

Which, if he didn't dare emerge from his room without an escort again...might be a long time.

Didn't he have anything better to do than sit around feeling sorry for himself?

Right then...no. Nothing better than to lie around, contemplating how helpless and useless he was, in between pondering the realities of the universe and whether everything he saw was a hallucination and everything he remembered was his imagination. Even though he'd resolved to act as though the universe he sensed around him was the true reality in order to avoid losing what was left of his mind, he was having trouble keeping his resolution. Maybe he hadn't had any of his mind left at the outset. Maybe it was already lost.

"Mrrr."

Well, he could pet Connie, too. At least that was better than doing nothing and feeling sorry for himself. And her fur did feel very nice, especially when she purred and he could feel her vibrating slightly under his hand. When he closed his eyes and _focused_, simply stopped thinking about anything but the cat and her fur...for a second, he could forget everything else, and just be. "C-c-c-connn...sooolllaaaation," he whispered to himself, testing out her full name on his leaden tongue. "C-connnssolllaaaation. Connn-solllation. Con-sol-a-tion...Consolation."

"Rawr," Connie said in an almost approving tone, as she slid out from under his hand to nibble on his hair. "Rrowmmr." That was a new one; was she trying to have a conversation or something? _Siamese are a highly talkative breed, with many different vocalizations_, he remembered...learning...somewhere...somehow...he just couldn't quite...

_Didn't I read that in a book somewhere? I don't even remember how to read..._

_Maybe I should try to re-learn..._

Slowly picking his way over to his bookshelf, he ran his fingers over the spines, tracing the now-meaningless shapes and figures that made up their titles. But just because he couldn't read those titles anymore didn't mean he didn't know what the books' names were..._Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati_, he thought to himself as he carefully removed one well-worn old text from the shelf. _By Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkande. This one is Volume 1..._ He smiled faintly as he opened the cover of the venerable old textbook - one of the definitive works on Hindustani music and musical theory. He owned all four volumes and read them often. Or, well, used to.

_Remember what it used to be like. Remember when this made sense to you. When it made sense to you, what did it say?_

Opening the book and closing his eyes, he cast his mind back to _back then_. Back when the worlds made sense, and all was right with his mind...and all the squiggles and shapes on the front cover made sense, and they read _Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati, by Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkande_. Each of those shapes represented a sound, and when you put them together in the right order, those sounds made up the sounds of a word...Very slowly, he traced over each letter one by one in his mind, focusing on the sound they each made and how they fit into the larger word. Opening his eyes, he saw another book on the shelf, another well-read friend - he knew it was _Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya_ without reading the title, but he actually recognized the written word _Sangeet_.

_Sangeet_. Music.

_Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya_. Indian Musical Instruments. _Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati._ System of Hindustani Music.

The letters only said one thing, though. Why would he think of it and...well, he knew they _said_ only one thing, and _meant_ only one thing. It was just that...he knew a way of saying that one thing other than the one the letters spelled out. A way that was really just as right as the first way. Actually...he knew more than one other way. That was kind of cool.

And there were more, too. The _Mahabharata_, which he recalled promising himself he would read one day...had he ever? He didn't know, but at least he learned a few new letters from the cover. And then there was the _Kama Sutra_...ah, yes, he remembered angrily ripping it out of Fori's hands and yelling at him for some reason; he didn't quite remember why, let alone why he'd kept it, but even the bit of memory he had made him smile a little, though he didn't know why or what was funny about it. And then there were books written with very different-looking letters, whose remembered titles sounded very different. _The Handbook of Violin Care_, which he remembered reading from cover to cover right after he got his first violin - as he puzzled out the letters on the cover, he wondered if he could figure out how to play again once he re-learned how to read. _Beaches of the Worlds_, which had a lot of nice pictures and not so many words - it might be a good book to start with. Funny, though, how two letters that looked so different could sound the same, between this kind of letter and the first kind. Oh, and there was _All About Siamese Cats_...and when he pulled that one off the shelf, he started to _remember_ things. Nothing so grand as remembering how to read all at once, but...he could almost see himself there, he was almost there all over again...he was worried, frightened, in pain, no longer able to feel safe in his own home or to enjoy the activities he loved...desperate for an escape with the one friend he still felt safe with...and when they went to escape, they found a sign where no sign had been before, and cages where cages usually were not, one of which contained a little white kitten with dark paws and ears who wanted to play...

"Nnnyowrow."

"Y-y-yeahhh...tha-th-that was...y-you," Demyx said, looking down at the cat twining around his ankles as if she didn't have a care in the world. Come to think of it, this was probably the book where he'd read that little blurb about how talkative Siamese were...

With a tiny smile, he stumbled back over to the bed with it and opened it fully, trying to puzzle out the meaning of all the words inside from the little he'd gleaned from all those covers. It wasn't long before he had to give up with a headache and lie down again, with Connie nibbling at his hair, but he was proud of himself nonetheless. He'd made a start.

* * *

><p>AN: When I started writing this, I had no idea what direction it was going to go. This particular route wasn't even one of the original possibilities. It just kind of...happened.<p> 


	5. Chapter 5

Demyx was cold. At least, he thought he was. He couldn't exactly tell, or quite remember what cold was supposed to feel like, but his instincts were telling him to put on thicker clothing and get some blankets or something, because he wasn't comfortable, and adding layers would make him more comfortable. And comfortable was a good thing to be.

Burrowing back into the blankets was risky; it might lead to him going back to sleep, which would neatly absent him from the puzzles of the world for a while, but at the risk of more bad dreams. They were no longer quite so horrifying as they had been, once he'd established that the bad things didn't really happen and people didn't really get hurt and die, but they were still highly unpleasant. And they certainly seemed all too real while he had them. Plus, he learned more interesting old/new things while he was awake.

For instance, if this actually was what "cold" felt like, he'd learned he didn't like it. In fact, he disliked it so much that he absolutely did not want to get out of bed, for fear of exposing himself to more of it. Cold brought back bad memories, from dreams and from reality, that he would rather not dwell on, and he was happy to just huddle up in bed until it went away. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough clothing or blankets to keep it away entirely, and getting more would require getting out of bed and exposing himself to that nasty cold. Was it better to continue suffering a low level of cold, or risk the effects of a lot of cold at once in the hopes of making it all go away? As of right now, suffering the low level seemed to be the lesser evil, so he remained where he was, bundled up in his blankets. Even when Connie hopped onto the bed in search of company, he only allowed one hand to emerge from cover to stroke her fur, and that only reluctantly.

"Demyx? You awake yet?"

"Y-yeah," Demyx answered the voice from the other side of the door, secretly proud of how little he'd stumbled over the word. "I-I'm awake."

"That's good," Axel said as he carefully pushed the door open with his back, a mug in one hand and a plate of food in the other. "How are you holding out? Hungry at all?"

"M-mostly c-c-cold."

"Good thing I brought tea, then." Axel set the plate and mug down on the table by Demyx's bed, then sat down on the bed himself. "Better start with that."

"Ok-k-kay." Carefully sitting up a little further and working both hands out from under the blanket, Demyx took the mug off the table and raised it to his lips, but the searing _heat_ he could feel emanating from it made him reluctant to let its contents touch his lips. "D-did you..." He stopped short, aware that he wanted to ask Axel if he'd done _something_ to the tea, he always asked Axel if he'd done _something_ to the tea because that was how he liked to drink tea, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what that _something_ was. "I-I mean...d-di-did you..."

"Sweeten it? Yeah."

"Y-yeah...th-that's what I w-was th-thinking of. I g-guess. Th-thank you." Staring into the mug again, Demyx wondered - it was such a simple word, and a simple concept - but even though he knew he preferred it if it was done to his tea, he didn't even really know what _sweeten_ meant anymore. The word itself held no meaning, and even if he taste-tested the tea, he had no frame of reference for how it tasted without being sweetened and what sweetening did to it. Since he knew he always drank his tea like that, he knew that once upon a time, he'd decided that it was better sweetened than unsweetened, but how did he know anymore? Maybe if he tried it again, he'd think differently...

Did he want to know? If he tried unsweetened tea and decided he liked it better that way - if that...experience had caused him to change his tastes in tea - what else about him might it have changed? For the better? For worse? For the weirder? Would he even know he'd changed?

"Ax...c-could you...get me s-some uns-s-sweetened tea? I j-just...wanna t-try it."

Axel just stared at him, as if suspecting Demyx had lost the last of his mind at some point along the way. "...Okay...considering that I've never known you to drink unsweetened tea in your life...why?"

"I-I...I w-wanna...try it," Demyx said, feeling vaguely annoyed that Axel wouldn't just accept it. "J-just...bring m-me some."

Axel just kept staring at him, and finally shook his head and stuck his hand in Demyx's face. "Okay, you crackup, how many fingers am I holding up?" he demanded, but Demyx suddenly didn't care how many fingers Axel was holding up, or whether or not Axel thought he was nuts. Axel _knew_ how screwed-up his mind was, and he shouldn't be calling him out on it over something as simple as tea, and those fingers were just _too damn close to his face_. Without really thinking about it, Demyx grabbed Axel's fingers and bent them backwards, in a way that he subconsciously knew fingers were not supposed to bend, but he wanted them the hell _out of his face_. Axel's sudden howl of pain made him let go, but he didn't reconsider his actions for a second. "You little psycho!" Axel snapped, shaking his hand and glaring evilly at Demyx; Demyx only stared defiantly back at him. After all, Axel shouldn't have shoved his hand in his face like that. "Fuck this - get your own damn tea! If you're not too stupid to figure it out...!" With that, he stormed back to his own room, slamming the door behind him, but Demyx never said a word. It was Axel's fault, for getting in his face like that; all he'd done was react appropriately.

He kept staring at the closed door long after Axel was gone, for reasons he didn't really understand. Axel was gone, and he at least had _some _tea; even if he didn't know what difference sweetening it made anymore, at least he knew that he (used to) like it sweetened anyway. Besides, Axel shouldn't have gotten in his face like that. He knew Demyx's mind was screwed up; he shouldn't have gotten snippy with him for...well, having a screwed-up mind, including things like not knowing how tea tasted anymore, sweetened or unsweetened. All right, he knew it must have hurt when he bent Axel's fingers back like that - the yelp he'd let out had been a giveaway that he was in pain, and boy, did Demyx know what pain felt like - but it was his own fault. And there was absolutely no reason for him to _shout_ at him like that.

And there was no reason for Demyx to start crying, either, or to suddenly hate the thought of drinking the tea he had. After all, it was all Axel's fault...wasn't it? It had to be...even if Demyx had hurt him...it had only been a little bit; his fingers would have been fine as soon as he let them go, but...he'd _hurt_ him. And now Axel was gone, and he was probably _angry_ at him, and Demyx wasn't going to get to try unsweetened tea and see if it was better sweetened or not, and it was all his fault. And all he could do now was wish he hadn't done that.

* * *

><p>AN: Sometimes you just write, and see what the characters do.<p> 


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